Whats a springtooth, and how do I use it?

[Theowegian]

Im looking buying this springtooth, as the mfg label calls it. Anyway, I have a pasture that Im trying to level it out and convert to lawn or something that is level enough that I could mow. I have about 5 acres that I want to plant tall fescue.

This springtooth has three (4’ wide) gangs of chisel teeth. Overall width is 12 ft and it’s 3 pt hitch. Each gang can be lowered or raised by an individual lever.

My questions:
1. Is this a good choice to level out my ground to create a lawn?
2. Can a 30 hp, Kubota L3130, 4x4 pull this adequately?
3. Do you pull it as fast as you can? Or slowly?
4. Anyone else got any experience with this sort of implement?
5. Any idea what I should pay for it? Im clueless on this question…

Thanks,

dwight

 

[Argee]

What you have there is a spring tooth harrow...It is used as a final preparation for the seed bed when planting. I had an 8' unit that literally rotted out because of many years of neglect.

That unit looks to be in pretty good working order..The harrow teeth themselves are made of spring steel and are very hard. Thus the name.

You would pull it no faster than a disk harrow..I ran mine in mid-range, 3rd gear.

It does a great job of leveling your field after you have plowed. It also does a nice job on its own if there is light weed and grass.

 

[Argee]

Oh yeah...the levers control the depth of cut. This you need to experiment with...you don't want to go to deep on the initial pass or you'll be really working your tractor. By the way I have a Ford NH 1715 which is 27HP and it pulled an 8' unit with no trouble. I can't help you on the price as I got mine off my uncles farm.

 

[Roto]

Ok thats a spring tooth harrow alright and I have 3 of them. The price around here for a used one would be about $100 to $200 for one in good shape. they are a dime a dozen around here. I bought my 8 footers for $50 each but not in that a good a shape. They will not be good for leveling a pasture if its grass now. You will need to break that ground up with something first and even that, I dont think they are very good for leveling either. they will pop up tons of small rocks to the surface and give you hours of work rock picking. They are only good for a field that has been plowed and disc'd and they help knock of the humps and make the dirt good enough for planting grass but now days there are much better ways then just going round and round with one of them. you can try a tiller or disc harrow but for making it level you will need a drag that is wide like 16 feet and heavy and pull that around on loose dirt to help fill in holes. Or some other means (boxscraper and a good eye) but the spring harrow flexis over the hills and mounds and wont knock them down good and wont pull enough dirt to fill in holes. I would find something to loosen up the turf ground thats there like a roto tiller on a day when soil is soft and then pull a homemade drag of some sort around thats like 14-16 feet wide and no so heavy that you cant pull it but good enough to knock the humps down and fill low spots. Of course I would have to see the ground your working on and could go into more detail about the drag if you want but I dont think the Spring harrow will do a good job in my opinion. Other answers are Yes you can pull it but it wont be easy. 12 foot is gonna pull hard you may want to take a section off and make it an 8 . A nice easy pace pulling it. Not fast.

Mike

 

[rdln]

My harrow has a heavy pipe stretching across the front, I actually bought it new, yes there a used ones available but very few are 3pt. My experience with mine leads me to believe that it would do a good job knocking down hills and filling in voids. You will need to mow the area very short first and start out while the ground is soft, just scratching the sod and work your way down. I dont think your tractor will pull 12' at deepest settings.

Other preperation options are to burn the weeds down or mow and let green up to about 5" and spray roundup.

If you kill with roundup the sod will breakup and you will have a much easier time.

It will work fine, but you need patience.

 

[Roto]

Mine is same harrow with heavy pipe and 3pt. It all depends on what size holes and hills. Little football sizy holes and bread box hills it may work but dips that are like 6 foot by 6 foot and a 2 feet deep and hills that are 4 foot by 5 foot and a foot high it will keep following the contour of the ground unless you go over it dozens of times. But a drag made out of 2- 6x6's spaced 3 feet apart and 14 feet wide will go over it once or twice and it will be flat as the ground around it making mowing in future much more pleasurable. Loosen the dirt first find a rigid type drag to haul around and not a flexable one if you want a great job when done. Thats just my opinion and I have leveled 12 acres of land that started with woods and after destumping left thousands of rocks and holes and i thought the harrow would work but it wasnt even close to working good. however my drag worked awsome and was made with less then $100. I did use extensively a box land scraper as well which worked pretty good.
You know, one thing that the harrow may be good at is after you haul the drag around several times the ground will become packed and you wont have much dirt to work with to fill in holes so dragging the harrow around will help loosen it up some more to give you more material to drag into the holes or 6 foot by 6 foot dips and that sort of thing.

Mike

 

[Argee]

</font><font color="blueclass=small">( Mine is same harrow with heavy pipe and 3pt. It all depends on what size holes and hills. Little football sizy holes and bread box hills it may work but dips that are like 6 foot by 6 foot and a 2 feet deep and hills that are 4 foot by 5 foot and a foot high it will keep following the contour of the ground unless you go over it dozens of times. But a drag made out of 2- 6x6's spaced 3 feet apart and 14 feet wide will go over it once or twice and it will be flat as the ground around it making mowing in future much more pleasurable. Loosen the dirt first find a rigid type drag to haul around and not a flexable one if you want a great job when done. Thats just my opinion and I have leveled 12 acres of land that started with woods and after destumping left thousands of rocks and holes and i thought the harrow would work but it wasnt even close to working good. however my drag worked awsome and was made with less then $100. I did use extensively a box land scraper as well which worked pretty good.
You know, one thing that the harrow may be good at is after you haul the drag around several times the ground will become packed and you wont have much dirt to work with to fill in holes so dragging the harrow around will help loosen it up some more to give you more material to drag into the holes or 6 foot by 6 foot dips and that sort of thing.
Mike )</font>

What you were using the spring tooth harrow for was well beyond its intended use. It was originally designed to follow the moldboard plow to prepare the field for seeding. Your application sounds as if you were trying to fill huge holes left by removal of stumps. If that is the case I can see why you were disappointed.

 

[wejones]

The real issue here is the type of soil you are working with. If you do not have a fairly loose sandy soil you will need some other implement to break the ground. Here in the red clay soils of Virginia we plow in the fall, let the ground freeze over winter which breaks the clods then use a heavy cutting disk for leveling and the spring tooth for the final preparation. I would also recommend that you reduce the size to 8' as your tractor does not have sufficient weight for traction and a 12' width would pull very hard. If you have access to a 6' offset cutting disc you could break your land with that. Your 4x4 will handle that size of a disc. After making several passes to get your soil broken up, make a drag of 6" landscape timbers and pull it behind the disc. As others said the way that will level the soil will be impressive. Then you can use the harrow for the final seed bed preparation. willie jones

 

[Roto]

Well I didnt go right out after destumping and drag the spring harrow around thats for sure. Im not that dumb. I pulled a big rig kinda like a vibrashank but old version and loosened up the dirt with that and then used box scraper to fill in holes and take off humps and pulled 2 different drags around before i used the spring harrow. I was hoping the spring harrow would help level it some more and loosen the dirt but it didnt do squat. I have a silty clay soil. Pretty hard! I ended up rototilling the whole thing with 6 foot tiller and then hauled that 16 foot drag around and leveled it and then seeded with brillion and you can do 70 mph now across the field with a escort. pretty smooth!!

Of coarse the correct way would be a big set of disc harrows pulling a drag at the same time but you have to have a farmer up the road or something to do it for you.

Mike

 

[rdln]

Agreed, the obvious highs and lows need to be balanced with a BB or loader bucket first.